How well does 2012's software run on 2009's iPhone? Ars finds out.

One of the iOS platform's advantages over its competitors is that official software updates are not just provided to older devices, but provided in a timely manner on a single date. It gives older phones and tablets a nice longevity boost, and allows Apple to continue selling older hardware that works and acts much like its newer counterparts.

The downside of that approach is that only Apple gets to decide if your hardware is worthy of an update. This can cause two problems: the first is that owners of not-so-old devices can be left with old software, as is happening to owners of the original iPad (which was, believe it or not, still the newest iPad available just 18 months ago). The second is that an update can be pushed out to devices that aren't ready to handle it, as happened when the iPhone 3G received the iOS 4.0 update in 2010.

That update wasn't just missing features compared to the version of iOS 4.0 that shipped for the iPhone 4 and iPhone 3GS—it also made previously existing functionality much slower. Now iOS 6 is here, and the iPhone 3GS is in a similar position: it has just come off the market, and it's using less RAM and a slower processor than the other supported devices. Does iOS 6 make the iPhone 3GS an unusable mess, or can people with older phones perform the update without reservations?

What don't you get?

Apple has been restricting certain iOS features to certain devices since iOS 4, and iOS 6 is probably the most confusing example of this yet, mostly because there are now many different iOS products with varying performance levels.

As the oldest supported device, the 3GS misses out on the largest number of features: it can't use the 3D Flyover or turn-by-turn navigation features of the new Maps app (restricted to the iPhone 4S and newer), Panorama mode (iPhone 4S or newer), or the offline reading list feature (iPhone 4 or newer). Features from older iOS versions that didn't make it to the 3GS are still not present in iOS 6: these include location-based Reminders (iPhone 4 and newer), WiFi Personal Hotspot (iPhone 4 and newer), FaceTime (iPhone 4 and newer), AirPlay Mirroring (4S and newer) and Siri (iPhone 4S and newer).

These missing features generally don't change the operation of the phone—they're simply not present. One app that does change is Maps: on newer devices, getting directions from "current location" invokes the turn-by-turn navigation feature. There's also a button in the lower-left corner of the screen that you can tap to bring up all the steps in your route.

On the 3GS, getting directions from your current location brings up a list of driving directions that you can swipe through to see where you're going—swiping from the left brings up the next step, and swiping from the right brings up the previous one. There's also no button to tap to bring up all of the steps at once, which seems like an odd omission to me. (If you have a newer phone and would like to see how this works, you get the same interface if you use anything other than "current location" as your starting point when getting directions.)

The iPhone 3GS gets the new Maps app, but without the turn-by-turn navigation feature.

Otherwise, Maps on the 3GS brings all of the changes it features on newer phones, including Yelp reviews, the revamped interface, and the lack of integrated public transit directions.

What do you get, and how fast is it?

Aside from the growing list of features restricted only to newer phones, the iPhone 3GS actually gets most of the new OS's tweaks and refinements—iOS 4 set expectations low on the iPhone 3G by excluding some of that version's best improvements, so it's nice to see the older handset so well-supported in this case. With the exception of the Siri and Maps sections, just about everything mentioned in our main iOS 6 review applies to the 3GS, including Passbook support, Facebook integration, shared Photo Streams, revamped sharing menus, Do Not Disturb, iCloud Tabs in Safari, the new Find My iPhone tweaks, the Camera app's exposure lock, the new Mail features, and the new call features, among others.

The new features also don't slow the phone down appreciably. To give you some idea of performance relative to iOS 5.1.1, we launched some standard apps in both versions to measure application launch times. These numbers measure the number of seconds starting from when the app icon is tapped and ending when it becomes usable:

Application

iOS 5.1.1

iOS 6.0

Safari

1.3 seconds

1.4 seconds

Camera

2.0 seconds

2.3 seconds

Settings

1.8 seconds

1.7 seconds

Mail

1.3 seconds

2.1 seconds

Messages

2.4 seconds

2.4 seconds

Calendar

1.4 seconds

1.6 seconds

Phone

1.1 seconds

1.0 seconds

Most of the results are well within the margin of error, with the exception of Mail, which consistently took around an extra second to launch. In practice, the phone feels about the same as it did running iOS 5—occasional stuttering and nowhere near as snappy as my current 4S, but still responsive to input in a way that the iPhone 3G with iOS 4 was not.

We also ran our standard suite of smartphone benchmarks on the 3GS under both iOS 5.1.1 and iOS 6 to see if there were any improvements or regressions. While GLBenchmark and Geekbench scores remain unchanged from iOS 5, improvements made to Safari's JavaScript engine continue to benefit the 3GS just as they benefit newer models.

While iOS 6 doesn't slow the 3GS down compared to iOS 5, the phone is still getting pretty long in the tooth—three years is a long time in technology. That goes doubly for the smartphone and tablet industries, where a doubling of performance between product generations is still possible.

Conclusions

Even if you subscribe to the belief that each year's iPhone improvements are merely incremental (and I tend to upgrade my phone hardware once every two years, myself), the jump in performance and features that you get by moving two or three generations at once really add up to a substantially better experience.

iOS 6 doesn't make the iPhone 3GS any slower or more difficult to use than it was before, which should be good news to anyone who keeps theirs around as a secondary or backup phone—indeed, it's pleasantly surprising how many of the refinements and improvements make their way down to Apple's oldest-supported piece of iOS hardware. However, that hardware has been surpassed so thoroughly by other iOS and Android handsets at this point that it's difficult to recommend it as a primary handset. You don't have much to lose if you upgrade a 3GS to iOS 6, but there's a lot more to gain by investing in a newer device.

Promoted Comments

iOS 6 is available for the 3GS, but not the original iPad. Why on earth not?

3GS = June 2009 - 600MHz Cortex-A8iPad = April 2010 - 1GHz Cortex-A8

I believe it's a RAM issue. The CPU is better in the iPad, but the device has the same amount of RAM (a mere 256MB). I still heavily use my original iPad, having decided to wait until the 4th gen to update, and I've found the RAM issue is a far worse problem on it than on a 3GS due to the larger assets used for 1024x768 resolution iPad apps (whereas the 3GS is just 480x320).

The situation stinks, and I recall thinking *immediately* upon the iPad's launch that the 256MB RAM was going to cause problems as a bottleneck before the rest of the device really fell behind, but it's how things are.

I might stick with iOS 5 on my 3GS, since that's already kinda slow. Seems like the main problem is the lack of RAM, switching between applications is where the phone really lags. Even so though, I'm not feeling a huge motivation to upgrade to an iPhone 5 or even some other kind of the latest and greatest smartphone. The 3GS works fine for me -- it works fine as a phone, I can check and send emails well, I can surf the web, and my most regularly used apps all work fine on the 3GS - Kindle, Things, Goodreader, Beejive IM, Soulver, 1password, etc. Out of all the stuff out there to spend money on, a marginally shinier smartphone experience is not high on my priority list.

Apple's claim to be the most innovative company in the world seems to be more PR than reality at this stage. Even Apple aficionados, not exactly the most discerning bunch in the world of tech, aren't too jazzed on the new phone. And, of course, the question that will be asked of everything Apple does from now until the end of time is: "What would Steve Jobs think?" http://bit.ly/QCqtxc

Thanks Ars, I was about to pull the trigger on iOS6 on my 3GS. This article is timely.

Kasmira wrote:

maars wrote:

Now let's try and install Jelly Bean on my G1!Any Google apologists would like to chime in on that one?

Your obvious flame-baiting aside, would you appreciate an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison?- HTC HD2.- Three years old.- Single core Snapdragon.- Not intended to run Android at all.- Jellybean with 100% features working. (; - (Edit: Whoopsie, I actually meant more than 100% thanks to Cyanogenmod!)XDA Developers really is a fantastic community.

So in other words, what we can do with our 3GSs in a single click, takes an army of geeks to do to a cherry-picked, unsupported HTC? This is an apples-to-apples comparison?!

It's better than dropping support for a product after, at best, 18 months.

Quote:

My iPhone4 does turn by turn navigation just fine with a couple GPS/Maps apps (which I'll continue to use of course). And Siri is just server side, proven to have worked fine on jailbroken older iPhones.

I find it worse than the Android handsent makers who don't release updates. At least there you know that they clearly don't care about old hardware. Apple makes a show of it, but really just craps on older users in an attempt to get them to upgrade their phone.

So not caring at all is better than caring a little bit?

Quote:

It is a pain to leave the Apple eco-system if you have collected a lot of iTunes purchases. Apple knows this and just leverages the missing features as a way to twist you into a new phone.

Which is the same reason Android updates doesn't generally make into 12 month old phones.

At least Apple does it gracefully over a span of 39 months and multiple phone revisions instead of a month or two after release and then dropping support after that.

Thanks Ars, I was about to pull the trigger on iOS6 on my 3GS. This article is timely.

Kasmira wrote:

maars wrote:

Now let's try and install Jelly Bean on my G1!Any Google apologists would like to chime in on that one?

Your obvious flame-baiting aside, would you appreciate an apples-to-apples (no pun intended) comparison?- HTC HD2.- Three years old.- Single core Snapdragon.- Not intended to run Android at all.- Jellybean with 100% features working. (; - (Edit: Whoopsie, I actually meant more than 100% thanks to Cyanogenmod!)XDA Developers really is a fantastic community.

So in other words, what we can do with our 3GSs in a single click, takes an army of geeks to do to a cherry-picked, unsupported HTC? This is an apples-to-apples comparison?!

Ooooh, "army of geeks". Now the handbags are coming out!

Actually most ROMs are cooked by a single person or a small group of people, and they're very easy to flash to your device. As for it being unsupported, do I need to reiterate that Android users don't need no stinking warranty? q; If I didn't want to get my geek on I'd get an iPhone.

Though, I thought the iPhone hardware warranty was one year and after that you had to extend your Apple Care. My HD2 was covered for 24 months.

iOS 6 is available for the 3GS, but not the original iPad. Why on earth not?

3GS = June 2009 - 600MHz Cortex-A8iPad = April 2010 - 1GHz Cortex-A8

I believe it's a RAM issue. The CPU is better in the iPad, but the device has the same amount of RAM (a mere 256MB). I still heavily use my original iPad, having decided to wait until the 4th gen to update, and I've found the RAM issue is a far worse problem on it than on a 3GS due to the larger assets used for 1024x768 resolution iPad apps (whereas the 3GS is just 480x320).

The situation stinks, and I recall thinking *immediately* upon the iPad's launch that the 256MB RAM was going to cause problems as a bottleneck before the rest of the device really fell behind, but it's how things are.

Apple's claim to be the most innovative company in the world seems to be more PR than reality at this stage. Even Apple aficionados, not exactly the most discerning bunch in the world of tech, aren't too jazzed on the new phone. And, of course, the question that will be asked of everything Apple does from now until the end of time is: "What would Steve Jobs think?"

Probably Steve would think, "Hey, we doubled the number of preorders in the first 24 hours from 1 million with the 4S to 2 million with the iPhone 5! Hooray for money!"

Apple's claim to be the most innovative company in the world seems to be more PR than reality at this stage. Even Apple aficionados, not exactly the most discerning bunch in the world of tech, aren't too jazzed on the new phone. And, of course, the question that will be asked of everything Apple does from now until the end of time is: "What would Steve Jobs think?" http://bit.ly/QCqtxc

Have you seen the A6 benchmarks? It's as fast as the 2010 Intel Atom, powering such laptops as the Dell mini 1210 netbook.

Likewise, the screen is 1136x640, almost as high as the mini 1210's 1280x800, and it's working battery life of 8 hours is pretty incredible, especially over LTE.

Though, I thought the iPhone hardware warranty was one year and after that you had to extend your Apple Care. My HD2 was covered for 24 months.

"Under warranty" and "supported" are two different things in the context of this thread. Here you're talking about the phone being under warranty meaning you'll get individual support for repairs/replacements/etc. from the manufacturer for problems with your individual phone. The above people talking about the phone being "supported" are referring to the model itself being supported with continued bug fixing, compatibility, and feature updates that keep the old phone model able to be used alongside newer devices and online systems.

So you could potentially have purchased your HD2 just after the last update it ever got, meaning it's no longer supported by the manufacturer, and yet still have 2 years of your warranty left over.

Though, I thought the iPhone hardware warranty was one year and after that you had to extend your Apple Care. My HD2 was covered for 24 months.

"Under warranty" and "supported" are two different things in the context of this thread. Here you're talking about the phone being under warranty meaning you'll get individual support for repairs/replacements/etc. from the manufacturer for problems with your individual phone. The above people talking about the phone being "supported" are referring to the model itself being supported with continued bug fixing, compatibility, and feature updates that keep the old phone model able to be used alongside newer devices and online systems.

So you could potentially have purchased your HD2 just after the last update it ever got, meaning it's no longer supported by the manufacturer, and yet still have 2 years of your warranty left over.

Ah yes I get you now. Officially updates for my HD2 ended with Windows Mobile 6.5, but that's why Android users like to take matters in to our own hands and do whatever we like with our handsets. Jailbreaking is exactly the same thing, albeit in a vastly limited way.

In its time my HD2 has seen WM6.5, WP7, WP7 Mango, Gingerbread, ICS and Jellybean and the way the bootloaders work you'd actually have to try to break the device doing this. Who needs "support"? q;

- HTC HD2.- Three years old.- Single core Snapdragon.- Not intended to run Android at all.- Jellybean with 100% features working. (; - (Edit: Whoopsie, I actually meant more than 100% thanks to Cyanogenmod!)

XDA Developers really is a fantastic community.

I think an apples to apples comparison would be if HTC still supported your phone.

Is that the best comeback you have? Android users don't need no stinking warranty. q; It was already out of warranty a year ago though, even if I didn't mess with it, because I don't extend them. It's just a toy at this point anyway though, I have had a Galaxy Nexus for some time (and already modded that too).

Say, does that mean you have opted never to jailbreak your device? I just wonder since I see people saying "oh well, you get the missing features anyway if you do".

in my expereince with the 3g, jailbreaking to enable features results in less than stellar performance. The 3g can multi task on ios 4 but it is pretty bad. I suspect features were dropped from the 3gs for the same reason.

A lot of the improvements that come with the OS are under the hood. For example with my ios apps I still suport OS 4.0 and above and can include everything but the original iphone because the 3g got ios4. this allows developers to adopt things like ARC in the case of ios4 and not drop support for older devices. App compatibility is the main reason Apple seems to release these updates for older devices. It prevents the insane fragmentation you see with android and allows developers to adopt new technology after it is introduced. iOS5 had an install base of around 80% and within a few days iOS 6 will have something similar. Many developers will write iOS6 specific apps using new features right after it is released, unlike Android where a fancy new feature might be available for 1-2% of the install base.

I own an HTC Desire (the first one), which came out some months later than 3GS, but was around the the same time as the 3GS. Along with the first Nexus phone, it was one of the flagship Android devices of its day.

UI snappiness-wise, 3GS was(is still) better. Feature-wise, it was the other way round.

( Funny enough -Android being the unoptimised code it was- the Desire became more responsive with each update. Alas it was woefully short on updates, abandoned quite soon after it was released : came with 2.1, officially abandoned at 2.3.5 )

and, in a last ditch effort to be on topic:

I think this test would have been more meaningful if the benchmarks were performed on all the major revisions of iOS on the 3GS (v3.0 through v6.0).

I wonder what keeps Turn by Turn and Siri off of the 3GS (besides marketing?) The OG Droid had no issue with Turn by turn as it really pulls the routing from the network when you give it your start/end points. I'd assume the new Maps.app does the same thing. The fact that it's also missing from the iPhone 4 tells me it's a marketing play.

Especially given that Navigon has worked just fine on both my 3G and 4 with no issues at all so it's certainly not a horsepower issue, well unless Apples Maps just sucks so hard that it really needs more grunt.

I want to spend zero time tracking down operating system upgrades for my phone.

Ah, sweet exaggeration. Once you know what you're doing you can be on XDA and flashing a ROM in a couple of minutes, I just flashed the latest Jelly Bean CM10 nightly on to my Galaxy Nexus a couple of hours ago and the whole process took about 2 minutes thanks to my settings and apps being backed up remotely.

Pat's King ot Steaks is just awful, Not Geno's awful but still. You should use the money you would spend in gas to upgrade your phone.

It may be hometown bias (I live a scant block and a half from these two establishments), but Pat's is pretty good. If you're not getting it with whiz or provolone you're doing it wrong. Mushrooms are also a welcome addition.

It's better than dropping support for a product after, at best, 18 months.

There are two schools of thought on operating system updates:

The Apple way - You'll get an update every year for at least two years, possibly longer. Whilst you'll get new features and bug fixes, as your phone gets older you won't get everything that the update offers due to either technical reasons (it would run like a dog on your phone) or annoying marketing reasons (we'd like you to update your phone for this).

The Android way - If you get an update, you should get everything (so far you have, but you never know with those OEMs in the future). Some things might not work so well because of limitations with your hardware, but you should get it anyway and it's your choice whether or not you use it. Unfortunately we cannot guarantee that you'll get any releases after you have bought the phone - an "all or nothing" approach if you like.

I want to spend zero time tracking down operating system upgrades for my phone.

Ah, sweet exaggeration. Once you know what you're doing you can be on XDA and flashing a ROM in a couple of minutes, I just flashed the latest Jelly Bean CM10 nightly on to my Galaxy Nexus a couple of hours ago and the whole process took about 2 minutes thanks to my settings and apps being backed up remotely.

The ROM you download from the Internet and flash to your device is not official, tested software -- you won't get official features (HTC Sense, Samsung Touchwiz, etc.) and the QA is exactly what you'd expect from free software.

I want to spend zero time tracking down operating system upgrades for my phone.

Ah, sweet exaggeration. Once you know what you're doing you can be on XDA and flashing a ROM in a couple of minutes, I just flashed the latest Jelly Bean CM10 nightly on to my Galaxy Nexus a couple of hours ago and the whole process took about 2 minutes thanks to my settings and apps being backed up remotely.

The ROM you download from the Internet and flash to your device is not official, tested software -- you won't get official features (HTC Sense, Samsung Touchwiz, etc.) and the QA is exactly what you'd expect from free software.

Not manufacturer official, no, but tested? It sure is. CyanogenMod, for example, has a consistent development cycle of nightlies and now monthlies, then release candidates and official versions. Members of the community who don't want to be guinea pigs can stick to the prior version while everyone else rapidly works out all the bugs.

As I keep saying though; This is just something many Android users like doing, and it's why many Android users don't buy iPhones. If all you want to use is 100% official software with every parameter dictated by Apple then I have no issue with that, different strokes for different folks, but let's not forget the original sarmy comment that started this branch of discussion (the G1 comment at the top of page 1) and how inaccurate it turned out to be.